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Effectiveness of home-based nutritional counselling and support on exclusive breastfeeding in urban poor settings in Nairobi: A cluster randomized controlled trial

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posted on 2017-12-04, 13:47 authored by Elizabeth W. Kimani-Murage, Paula GriffithsPaula Griffiths, Frederick Wekesah, Milka Wanjohi, Nelson Muhia, Peterrock Muriuki, Thaddaeus Egondi, Catherine Kyobutungi, Alex C. Ezeh, Stephen T. McGarvey, Rachel N. Musoke, Shane A. Norris, Nyovani J. Madise
Background: Exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) improves infant health and survival. We tested the effectiveness of a home-based intervention using Community Health Workers (CHWs) on EBF for six months in urban poor settings in Kenya. Methods: We conducted a cluster-randomized controlled trial in Korogocho and Viwandani slums in Nairobi. We recruited pregnant women and followed them until the infant’s first birthday. Fourteen community clusters were randomized to intervention or control arm. The intervention arm received regular home-based nutritional counselling by CHWs trained on maternal infant and young child nutrition (MIYCN) and standard care while the control arm received optimized standard care that included home-based counselling by CHWs trained on primary health (which includes general community nutrition) and maternity care, but were not specifically trained on MIYCN as for the intervention CHVs. CHWs in both groups distributed similar information materials on MIYCN. Differences in EBF by intervention status were tested using chi square and logistic regression, employing intention-to-treat analysis. Results: A total of 1,110 mother-child pairs were involved, about half in each arm. At baseline, demographic and socioeconomic factors were similar between the two arms. The rates of EBF for 6 months increased from 2% pre-intervention to 55.2% (95% CI 50.4-59.9) in the intervention group and 54.6% (95% CI 50.0-59.1) in the control group. The adjusted odds of EBF (after adjusting for baseline characteristics) were slightly higher in the intervention arm compared to the control arm but not significantly different: for 0-2 months (OR 1.27, 95% CI 0.55 to 2.96; p=0.550); 0-4 months (OR 1.15; 95% CI 0.54 to 2.42; p=0.696), and 0-6 months (OR 1.11, 95% CI 0.61 to 2.02; p=0.718). Conclusions: EBF for six months significantly increased in both arms indicating potential effectiveness of using CHWs to provide home-based counselling to mothers. The lack of any difference in EBF rates in the two groups suggests potential contamination of the control arm by information reserved for the intervention arm. Nevertheless, this study indicates a great potential for use of CHWs when they are incentivized and monitored as an effective model of promotion of EBF, particularly in urban poor settings. Given the equivalence of the results in both arms, the study suggests that the basic nutritional training given to CHWs in the basic primary health care training, and/or provision of information materials may be adequate in improving EBF rates in communities. However, further investigations on this may be needed. One contribution of these findings to implementation science is the difficulty in finding an appropriate counterfactual for community-based educational interventions.

Funding

This study was funded by the Wellcome Trust, Grant # 097146/Z/11/Z.

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

Globalization and Health

Volume

13

Citation

KIMANI-MURAGE, E.W. ...et al., 2018. Effectiveness of home-based nutritional counselling and support on exclusive breastfeeding in urban poor settings in Nairobi: A cluster randomized controlled trial. Globalization and Health, 13, Article 90.

Publisher

© the Authors. Published by BioMed Central

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2017-11-23

Publication date

2017-12-19

Notes

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by BioMed Central under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

ISSN

1744-8603

Language

  • en